Historically Finnair’s core business has been connecting Europe to the far east. The airline took advantage of its hub’s northern position to connect Europe to Asia overflying Russian airspace. That advantage boomeranged with the airspace closure but the airline’s intention to focus on Asia remained intact. Finnair continues to see strong demand on flights to Japan, so much so that it’ll be increasing services in summer 2027.
In this post:
- Up To Three Daily Flights to Tokyo in Summer 2027
- Timings and Flight Details
- No More Siberian Shortcut
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Up To Three Daily Flights to Tokyo in Summer 2027
Summer of 2026 is just winding down, but of course for airline network planning its is already time to announce the 2027 updates.
One of Finnair’s main network updates is its addition of extra flights to Tokyo, Japan.
The airline continues to experience strong demand for Asia and particularly Japan. That is thanks to many more Europeans visiting the country as a weak Yen makes Japan a more attractive tourist proposition.
Specifically there’ll be an additional flight to Tokyo Narita entering Finnair’s 2027 summer schedule. The service will operate under flight number AY71 outbound and AY72 inbound to Helsinki.
This flight will add to the current Finnair schedule of two daily flights split evenly between Tokyo Narita (AY73) and Tokyo Haneda (AY61) Airports.
Timings and Flight Details
AY71 will allow Finnair to accomodate the increase in passenger traffic it expects for the next summer season between Europe and Japan. That is despite its now unfavorable geographical position compared to southern European carriers.
The flight will operate with an early afternoon departure out of Helsinki and a arrival back in the mid-afternoon:
| Volo | Route | Airport Codes | Departure | Arrival |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AY71 | Helsinki-Tokyo Narita | HEL-NRT | 12:20 | 07:15(+1) |
| AY72 | Tokyo Narita-Helsinki | NRT-HEL | 08:55 | 15:35 |
The aircraft as for all other far east destinations will be one of Finnair’s Airbus A350-900s. They are the best suited plane in the airline’s fleet to operate these sectors to Japan.
No More Siberian Shortcut
I’ve referred more than once to the fact that Finnair now finds itself in a geographical unfavorable position compared to southern European carriers. That’s because prior to the Russian airspace closure the carrier could overfly siberia and have extremely short flight times compared with many of its European peers.
However that is no longer the case and Finnair now has to fly the central asian route all other carrier use for east west flights. That means basically backtracking flying south over Romania and finally entering the Asia-Europe central Asian flight corridor.
This has put under a lot of stress Finnair’s entire business model, so much so that the CEO also started speaking out about the “unfair advantage”, from his standpoint, Chinese carriers have from overflying Russia. However, as we all learnt as kids life isn’t always fair and the circumstances are the result of our own decisions.